A friend had helped me pick out the dress on a trip to St. Croix. It was two separate sleeveless dresses designed to be worn one over the other. I loved the pattern of vertical stripes of lime, teal, hibiscus red and mango on a background of purple shadows. The scoop-neck dress was a filmy rayon concoction that draped over my curves all the way down to my ankles. The slits up both sides to mid-thigh were such a tease that even I felt sexy wearing it.

“Boy, are you lucky,” I said, examining the dress. “The seams are still OK.”

I got up and walked over to the wicker baskets where I stored my underwear, hearing my flip-flops slapping the tile floor as I made my way. Underneath one of the cats curled up asleep in the basket, I found what I was looking for.

“Here,” I said, handing Tom a black half-slip. “You can wear this. It’s too long for me to wear with any of my dresses.”

“You sure?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I’m sure.” I thought this was probably just a new compulsion of his, one of many obsessions that had come and gone, never to be mentioned again. Over the 10 years we’d been married, there had been the winter of studying for the ham radio instead of finding work; the sled-dog team; acquiring goats to train as pack animals; preparing to ski the Haute Route in Europe; and grinding his own flour. Just to name a few.

Next, Tom showed me his new panties for men, called Manties . . . and a yellow thong like the bushmen wear.

“Oh, a penie guard,” I said.

He seemed delighted with his new apparel. “It’s getting late,” he said. “The new sex toys can wait.”

The next day I pondered Tom’s latest interest. Did he anticipate my question, “What’s in this for me?” Is that why he ordered the sex toys? And what kind of paraphernalia could he be talking about? I had never been into kinky stuff, which reminded me of a funny saying: “Kinky is using a feather; perverted is using the whole chicken.” I hoped the sex toys were more feathers than chicken.

I smiled as I puttered around the place, glancing every now and then at the view of the Caribbean out the wall of windows. Paradise had its pitfalls—like dust and bugs and mold—and the windows got dirty so quickly. I wanted to wash them. I really did. But instead, I turned my attention to my desk. When I needed staples for my tiny stapler, I descended the exterior wooden steps to the office/guest room. As soon as I slid open the glass door and entered the musty room, there they were . . . termite tunnels running all over the bookshelves. I grabbed an armload of books and fled the scene.

When I called Tom at work, he said, “I didn’t notice any termite tunnels, and I’ve been down there every morning and night on my computer. I can hardly believe it.”

“What have you been doing down there?”

There was no answer at the other end of the phone.

We had a lively evening as Tom entertained me with show and tell. First, he introduced me to the selection of sex toys he had purchased. One of them, “The Hired Man,” was made of high-tech silicone. He presented it to me with both hands, as if it were on a silver platter.

“Oh, yeah!” I said. “This thing has some heft to it.” It was neither a feather nor a chicken, but it was a sight to behold.

The saying, “Oh, yeah!” always made us laugh. We’d watched exactly one porno movie during our 10-year marriage. The woman in the movie kept saying, “Oh, yeah!” over and over, even though she did not appear to be enjoying what she was doing. It’s hard to get some images out of your head.

“You can imagine how long it took to research these things on the Internet using dial-up,” Tom confided in earnest, as if sharing a shopping tip. “It can take a long time for a dildo to load, depending on its size.”

We laughed like crazy people. The way sound carried on the moist air near the ocean, the neighbor bachelors must have wondered about us. When I recovered, I asked, “What else you got there?”

Tom’s face was a little red as he handed me a gelatinous pink thing, about 3 inches long and a couple of inches in diameter. When I turned it on end, I saw that the center of the lewd squishy deal was open all the way through.

“It’s called ‘The Pocket Rocket,’” he said. “It’s guaranteed to send a guy right into orbit.”

One night later in the week, while I was sitting on the bed reading, Tom came upstairs from his office and reached for his small duffel bag full of sex toys.

“I became aroused while researching those Seal A Meal devices,” he said, matter-of-factly, as he headed back downstairs with the duffel bag.

This small home appliance was a popular item in the islands. When you used one to seal up things like shoes or books or articles of clothing, they wouldn’t get moldy. We’d talked about getting one, and I guess tonight was the night. Later, when he came back upstairs and hung the duffel bag on the wall, he told me he’d ordered a Seal A Meal device off eBay. I didn’t ask him any other questions, even though I wondered if he’d still keep our appointment for sex tomorrow.

In the morning, he was up for sex as scheduled. But, frankly, I wasn’t that interested. Over the next couple of years, I would learn that love at the soul level has nothing to do with gender. But at the time, I did the best I could, which I felt was admirable. With a little help from The Hired Man, we were under the sheet, all lubed up, going at it with limited success. Off and on, I said, “Oh, yeah!” But really, I was thinking about washing the windows in the living room.

All of a sudden, our black cat pounced on us from the rafters. Tom leaped up, the cat flew into the air and I started cussing. Talk about coitus interruptus. And as the particles of dust, mold and cat hair settled, my first thought was, Well, all right, then. I guess I can go wash those windows.

Later that night, as we drifted off to sleep, smiling, I thought, I should just relax about Tom’s exploration of all things sexual. This could be an exciting new chapter in our lives. In fact, I felt certain I was falling in love with The Hired Man.

If only he did windows.

Rae Ellen Lee is the author of humor, fiction and neurotica. Her award-winning memoir, My Next Husband Will Be Normal (available on Amazon), is a humorous relationship drama about a couple who moves to the Caribbean, where the husband soon realizes he is really a she. Learn more at http://www.raeellenlee.com.

Again, this story appears in “Not Your Mother’s Book…On SEX.” Coined by the Northern Star in their review as the “compilation of copulation” (http://bit.ly/1b3iTfe), this book is filled with 69—yes, 69—carnal stories about everything SEX!